About the Author, J.X. Mason

The Author, J.X. Mason

“J.X. Mason” is the pen name for the Author of Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation: Finding Life’s Purpose & Meaning – In Nature, Science, & History

The Author chose “J.X. Mason” as his pen name because Nature’s Continuing Creation centers on constructive endeavors including designing, composing, growing, researching, inventing, teaching, and building.  The ancient and skilled craft of stonemasonry stands as an excellent representation of all constructive pursuits.  (We should note that J.X. Mason does not speak for, and has never been a member of, the fraternal organization of the Freemasons.)

J.X. Mason graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University, where he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Education and an MBA in Finance.  He served as a Naval Officer and Pilot Rescue Swimmer for three years. The main part of Mason’s career was spent working at one of the world’s largest financial companies.  There, he invested money on behalf of workers’ retirement plans by loaning it out to (and sometimes buying shares in) large and mid-sized corporations.  In retirement, JXM served as webmaster for a Unitarian Church, and edited a monthly newsletter called Distributed Power News, which reported on advances in green energy and on-site power generation.

• J.X. Mason is an active, posting member of The Religious Naturalist Association (https://religious-naturalist-association.org)
• Mason is also an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville (in Virginia) (uucharlottesville.org)
• Mason routinely posts to his own online Journal; and to Facebook, Facebook Groups, Substack, Reddit, Medium, and the Religious Naturalist Association website. 
• Mason is a member of the Virginia Writer’s Club.

Our Contributing Experts and Editors

• Matthew A. Carter, soon to be ordained an Episcopal Priest. BA from Harvard, Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford. Taught Classics at The Western University of Canada.
• Laura Emerson, Scholar in Theology & Classics. Guest lecturer at Unitarian Universalist events, and a respected writer on Off-road, Off-grid Living in Alaska.
  
• John Gandee, Chemical Engineer at Phillips Petroleum, Vice President at Combustion Engineering. University of Houston: Bachelors in Mathematics and Philosophy. 
• Ted Wendelin, Instructor Emeritus, University of Colorado, in Spanish, Translation, & International Business.  He has also published published articles on U.S. History.
• The Reverend Kendyl R. Gibbons, Senior Minister, All Souls Unitarian Church in Kansas City. 
• Bruce Fowler, Electronics Engineer with advanced degrees who pursued an extensive career at Bell Laboratories.
• Ms. “J.X. Mason,” Successful career in Information Systems Analysis. Bachelor’s in English and Masters in Education from Stanford. 
• Jane Friedman, Shawn Mummert, and Matt Horner: Each is independently and internationally recognized in writing and publishing. 

— “J.X. Mason & Associates” is the team of writers, editors and advisors who constructed, edited, reviewed ,and published Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation.
— Continuing Creation LLC, a Virginia not-for-profit corporation, holds copyright for the Essays, Journal Entry Posts, and Pages of this website.

A Message from the Author, J.X. Mason

“For over 20 years, I have been studying spirituality, science, and the “undeveloped land” between them.  In those decades many authors published ground-breaking books about this intellectual landscape.  I wrote notes in the margins of 173 of those books and lined them up on shelves above my computer.  I also spent the last ten years writing hundreds of pages of notes, outlines, and draft pages for this book.

“Nearly all of those books on my shelves were written by critically acclaimed authorities in their fields, most of them university professors. I have listed books by twenty-seven of these authors below. Most of these works call for a new synthesis of science and spirituality, although a minority of those authors say that such a synthesis is virtually impossible. But none of those books tries to be a synthesis of science and Nature-based spirituality. This has always seemed curious to me, since Nature has long been both the fount of both Earth-centered spirituality and the subject of science. Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation is intended to be a synthesis of science and Earth-centered secular-spirituality.”

“The book, finished as of 2026, is fully titled, Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation: Finding Life’s Purpose & Meaning – In Nature, Science, & History.  In the text, we sometimes refer to the book’s subject as “The Growing, Organizing, Direction of Nature’s Processes.”

“This book is a collection of 40 interrelated Essays. The book is available, (along with over a hundred journal posts) online at www.ContinuingCreation.org. All of these online writings are entirely free to all readers. We carry no advertising, and we do not ask for donations.  In early 2026, this book will also be available through Amazon’s Kindle Books, and other online publishers, at reasonable fees.

On a personal level, this book is the capstone to my many years of sobriety, keeping me in contact with my “higher power,” which I call “Nature’s Continuing Creation,” or “Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation.”

I hope you will enjoy reading my book of 40 Essays, and my online Journal Entries.” — Very truly yours, J.X. Mason.

Recommended Books and Articles Related to Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation:

Listed by year of publication:

• William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902).
• Alan Watts, The Way of Zen (1957).
• Huston Smith, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (1958).
• Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (1975).
• Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (1983).
• Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (1984).
• Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (1986).
• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006)
• Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2009)
• James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (1987).
• Dominick Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (1991).
• Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (1992)
• Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1995)
• Lawrence LeShawn, How to Meditate: A Guide to Self-Discovery (1999)
• Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation (1999).
• Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity & Islam (2000); and The Case for God (2010).
• Mark Forstater, The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius (2001).
• Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (2002)
• Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and The Biology of Belief (2002)
• Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (2010)
• Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010).
• Stephen Prothero, God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World, (2010)
• Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most Astonishing Number (2003); and Is God a Mathematician? (2010).
• Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (2002); and Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation (2011).
• Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (2009); and The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2012).
• Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006); and The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics (2013).
• Robert M. Hazen, The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet (2013).
• E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975); On Human Nature (1979); and The Meaning of Human Existence (2015).
• Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind (2015); and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017).
• David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything (2018)